A Fable of Solitude/Chapter 1
Text AN: derek wrote this and he wanted me to post it online because he doesnt want to create an account. He thinks hes gonna be hacked lololol. He said he wanted criticism though so please be nice! NO FLAMERS ALLOWED FOR DEREK!!!!!!!!!!!!!! >:[ its based on the story "the grasshopper and the ant" by la fontaine (hes a French guy, and Derek knows about him because of me! I feel so smart thanks to him ) but also on his own life and he made it soooo better <3 It was a dark, foggy, cold, wintery night, where the mist veiling the streets was lazily drifting around the ice dangling from the roofs, inching its tentacles as if it were trying to grip at the heart of our protagonist. Nobody knew his name but himself; instead, he was only known as the Grasshopper, for he was a singer, and his melodies had the regal beauty of grasshoppers singing for the setting day star in the summery plains of California. Grasshopper, or Rass, as the few people who dared called themselves his friends were used to naming him, was a young man, barely out of his teenage years. He was tall, and dark, and strong; all the girls wanted him, but he did not want them, and his heart was filled with woe at the thought that no man seemed bold enough to approach him, and that he himself was not brave enough to ask them. So he sang, hoping to attract one like a frog attracts its mate. Rass hated the winter, because it was the time where people had to dress warmly, and he was unable to show off his muscled chest and arms in his desperate quest for love. The icy cold wind seemed to laugh and mock and moan, reminding him of all the luckier people who had the chance he had not. In the dark, cold and lonely season, Rass's talent evaporated. The tears that welled up behind his eyes and in his throat in the winter were freezing over, and he could barely speak without aching painfully. Because of that, the winter meant something else for Rass: without his singing, he could not make money, having never been able to find a suitable employment that would suit his free spirits and his lack of perseverance. That, too, the mist and the wind seemed to ridicule. Rass ignored it, pulling his collar up as if it served any protection against his own morose thoughts. He was at his family's home, in the cold Ohio, but it was not his own: Rass belonged in Los Angeles, where winter never truly reached. Still, he had no choice but to come here, and beg for help from his only living relative: his Aunt Marjorie. Or, as he liked to call her, his Ant Marjorie. She was almost his age, barely older than him, as Rass's father had been older than her mother when she married Rass's grandfather, and could have been called beautiful, as she was just the right height, not too tall or too short, with vibrant chocolate eyes and luscious hair of the same color, and a beautifully shaped body. But underneath her make-up, her wits and her apparent kindness, was the woman Rass had loathed his entire life. She had always been like a sister to Derek, the kind of sister who was always better than him in everything, and, perhaps more importantly, who was having all the boys Rass could only pine after. When Rass arrived at her home, in the ancestral house of their family, she greeted him with a hollow pleasure, embracing him as if she loved him, and smiling a smile that looked very fake to Rass. "I need money, Marj," Rass exclaimed to her once he was sitting in her cozy living room. It was all too pretty, too proper: the kind of place only the weirdest people could live in. Like Ant Marjorie. "Again?" the young woman asked incredulously. As if it had not been the case every winter in the past three years since he had left his home, after the death of his father, Ant Marjorie's mother, and their grandfather. "Yes. It's really important." "But didn't you tell me you would find a job?" she asked, pretending to sound concerned. As if he didn't know her true nature! "I have one. I'm a singer. A successful one, too." But success came with its own expanses, and money fell faster than leaves in autumn. "So, are you going to write me that check?" Ant Marjorie looked sad but resigned. "I'm sorry, but I can't. When they made me your legal guardian, I tried to be nice about it, but I can't give you anything anymore. Your dad wanted his money to be spent on a college education, and that's not even possible anymore. I can still deny you that money for four years, until you turn twenty-one, and I will. You'll only get the bare necessities from me now, until you learn to be more clever about it." Rass felt rage fill up his vein and burn every inch of his skin. "You can't deny me my own money!" he yelled. "I can, and I will. For your own good." "And what am I going to do for four years without money?" Ant Marjorie paused, as if she was seriously thinking about it and not just trying to come up with an excuse to send him off — but Rass knew better. "Well, you haven't been able to keep a stable job… But you do love it when you're singing, don't you?" "Of course I do! I'm a fucking superstar!" Ant Marjorie frowned at the curse word. "Then maybe you should look into that. How about you learn to dance, too? I can even pay for lessons if you need some." Rass gasped, furious and indignant. But he could turn it to his advantage. "All right. I'll find a place in LA and tell you where to send the money." "No," Ant Marjorie said, shaking her head. "You will not go back there, make me send money to God knows whom, and not change anything. I want you to stay here for a while, in Ohio." Rass fumed, and argued, and disputed, and battled, but Ant Marjorie was adamant, even threatening him to call in on their family's lawyer, reminding him that his dad's will required Rass to remain in Ohio until his twenty-first birthday, except to go to college, if he wanted to inherit; something that Ant Marjorie had overlooked up until now. Eventually, though, Ant Marjorie did agree to an arrangement: Rass would take dance classes in Ohio during the winter, but in spring, he would go back to LA to start singing again, and would take his dance classes there as well. It still meant Rass had one month to spend in Ohio. Cold, freezing, sad, lonely, Ohio, with only Ant Marjorie as company. Rass dreaded the time to come. ---- AN: Derek said it wud b in several chapters but tell me what you think already! Characters *Rass *Marjorie Chapter 1